A filming crew with STB was targeted by Russian FPV drones while traveling with Ukrainian service members and press officer in Dnipropetrovsk oblast late on August 6. The reporters and soldiers managed to get out of their pickup truck in time; one of the drones attacked the empty vehicle shortly after. The vehicle caught fire, and five people, two media professionals and three service members, had o take cover in a sunflower field, STB correspondent Anastasia Vilkhova told Kateryna Lysiuk, the Institute of Mass Information’s representative in Dnipropetrovsk oblast.

The filming crew set out from Dnipro city late on August 6, headed for the town where they were to meet with a UAF press officer. After the meeting, Anastasia Vilkhova and Oleksandr Dubyna joined a group of soliders in their pickup truck and headed to the Artillery Brigade No. 147 positions, where the reporters had planned to film a news story about the soldiers’ work.

At around 5 am., as the vehicle was driving along an empty road, one of the service members spotted their vehicle on the drone detector screen.

“I honestly don’t know how away far from the position we were, but we didn’t make it. The lads spotted our car on the Chuika [drone detector]. They said, ‘Stop, stop, stop, everyone out!’ And we all rushed out of the vehicle,” Anastasia Vilkhova said.

She, the cameraman, and the press officer had been in the car’s backseats. The press officer’s door got jammed, so all three had to climb out through one side of the car.

“And there’s this bare field around us, I mean literally, a bare field, and this drone. We all scatter. The drone circled around, and then it went straight for our car, cutting off our comms, hitting the Starlink, everything. The car started smoking. And there was the second drone, they always fly in pairs. And all this was happening in twilight — not pitch black, but still dark,” the journalist recounted.

There were only two trees near the spot where the strike occurred, which, Vilkhova said, looked more like a couple of tall bushes. Realizing that more drones could be incoming within minutes, the service members decided that they and the journalists should hide in the sunflower field and crawl deeper into it.

The unit’s positions were still about three kilometers away, but crossing that distance across open ground was too dangerous.

“About seven minutes later, maybe, two more drones came in. The lads took out one drone, took out the other, and I was just lying there thinking, ‘Damn, is it right above me or not?’ And the five of us were crawling through this field,” Vilkhova recalled.

She said that the soldiers had shot down the drones, some of which fell down around 10 meters away from them.

The whole time, the journalist was trying to hide her microphone, labelled with a bright red STB logo. The correspondent knew that if the Russian drone operators realized they were hunting media workers, the number of drones coming their way would multiply many times over. Cameraman Oleksandr Dubyna kept filming through the entire drone strike.

About 40 minutes after the attack began, the crew heard a vehicle on the road.

“We were crawling along and we heard this sound, like a car, and the soldiers said, ‘A car!’ And these guys in the car drove past the four of us, and just then happened to spot the fifth person. That was the only reason they stopped,” Vilkhova said.

She added that the service members driving along the road hadn’t been supposed to be there at that time. They had changed their plans due to the intense drone activity, setting out for their positions that morning instead. They spotted smoke from the disabled truck along the way and decided to check it out.

“They were driving along the road and they saw a vehicle smoking — ours. They decided to take a look. And they spotted us. They said, ‘Quick, over here,'” the journalist recalled.

The vehicle was carrying service members from the same brigade. They evacuated the filming crew and the three soldiers to a safer location.

After being rescued, the media workers recorded an interview with the service members who had helped them escape the attack.

After the incident, Anastasia Vilkhova said that the two trees and the farmers who had planted the sunflowers in the field may have saved their lives.

“We’re so grateful to them. We just wish all the best to these people, our farmers. The fact that they had sown the sunflowers in conditions like this saved our lives. Because without the sunflowers, it would have been a bare field with tall grass. And if you lie down in that, well, you’d definitely be spotted, whereas the sunflowers give you at least some cover, more or less. I’ve thought about this a lot over the last two days. It would have been such a pointless death,” Anastasia Vilkhova shared.

She added that after everything she’d been through, she’d thought a great deal about just how close the danger had come.

The media professionals and service members made it out without serious injuries. Anastasia Vilkhova was left with bruises and grazes on her arms and knees from crawling through the field. The TV channel offered the reporter and cameraman mental health support and assured them that they would not be charged for the damaged and lost equipment.